CHARLESTON, Ill. – The University of Tennessee at Martin softball team dropped its Ohio Valley Conference series finale to defending tournament champion Eastern Illinois by an 11-5 margin on Sunday afternoon.
The Skyhawks (14-12, 2-4 OVC) tallied nine hits in the loss but struggled defensively with three errors which led to several unearned runs for the Panthers.
The senior duo of Kaci Fuller and Anna Hazlewood led the team offensively with a pair of two-hit games. Five different players tallied RBIs in the game with Fuller joining Kennedy Brown, Alli Robinson, Kiersten Nixon and Avry Blume in the run production category.
Katie Dreiling (5-3) was hit with the loss after allowing three earned runs in one innings of action. Nixon and Hazlewood also pitched in relief, allowing three runs each, while Jordyn Hustey pitched a scoreless sixth inning.
Eastern Illinois (17-8, 5-1 OVC) jumped out to an early lead as three errors in the first inning led to five runs for the home team. Karson Davey drove in a pair of runs with a single up the middle before coming around to score herself on a double off the bat of Sophie Cerveny. The final run of the first inning came home on another fielding error off the bat of Briana Gonzalez.
The Panthers added two more runs in the second inning as Davey and Cerveny added more RBIs to their stat column with a single and a sacrifice fly, respectively. Then the squad pushed the margin to eight runs as Kendall Grover cranked a two-run home run in the third inning.
At risk of being run-ruled, the Skyhawks found their way into the scoring column in the fourth inning with a big five-run frame. Nixon got the scoring started for the road team with a single up the middle before Blume followed that up with a single of her own to give the squad two runs. Later in the frame, back-to-back singles by Fuller and Brown gave the Skyhawks four runs before Robinson capped off the big inning with a sacrifice fly to left field – cutting the margin down to 8-5.
The rally was short-lived for the Skyhawks as Eastern Illinois put the game out of reach in the bottom of the fourth inning – scoring three runs off a single by McKenzie Oslanzi and a two-run single by Rachel Kaufman.
UT Martin returns to action next week when hosting OVC rival SIUE for a three-game series beginning on Saturday, March 23.
